Snacking on different views : The potential of tagesschau.de in offering multiple perspectives in news overview elements to a young adult audience

Abstract:

In this paper a news site’s potential of meeting conflicting needs is considered. Snacking - hencereading news in a quick selective style - is one trend among young readers which seems to be inconflict with assessing the credibility of news, which in turn depends on receiving multipleperspectives or viewpoints among the issues read. As young audiences neither want to beforced to put more effort into news reading, nor want to receive news in a single-layered way,satisfaction with the news is hampered. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate acurrent news site’s potential in complying with both needs: snacking on the one hand andreceiving multiple perspectives on the other. As research case, the German public service newssite tagesschau.de is investigated in two methodological approaches. In a content analysis thepotential of the news site is assessed by analyzing ways of presenting perspectives in snacknews element. In a reception study this potential is reassessed by a young audience sample. Itwas found that perspectives indeed are presented in snack news elements in direct or indirectforms, often represented by different sources than the journalist’s. However, it shows that thesepresentations of perspectives not always reach the audience. Members of the audience leaveout many elements that could be snacked on, and stick to headlines for the main part. Thisimplies that they miss multiple perspectives offered in elements suitable for snacking, such ashyperlinks. In order to offer multiple perspectives to snacking news readers, more controversyshould be indicated in headlines, comparisons of perspectives should be made easier and linksshould be more relevant by leaving out aspects perceived as unnecessary and by representingsources in a better balance.